photophreek

I was surprised when Canon celebrated their 50 millionth EOS and their 70 millionth lens, because I realized just how few lenses they sell in comparison to cameras. Does anyone have any idea how many of this specific lens Canon sells in a year?

I may be missing something, but it looks like Canon sells 1.5 lenses to every EOS camera on average since 1987. It would be interesting to see what specific lenses sell in a given year.

Ahhh... the 70-300... my favourite lens before I got my 300 F4 (which was my favourite before I got my 300 2.! There are always a lot of 7X-300s for sale on ebay, so it would seem a lot of them have sold over the years...

Your breakdown is probably within the ballpark, but don't forget, the 50mm f/1.8 and 35-80mm zoom were kit lenses for millions of Canon EOS Rebel and other 35mm cameras for several years. The 35mm-80mm zooms are found used everywhere.

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Leopard Lupus

Canon is out to make a profit, we all are. They supply the demand for their product, simple. Boycotting a brand because you find the price to be too high for your budget is unrealistic. That is why point and shoot cameras were made. "We" annoy you? Personally, people who post moronic topics as you have, annoy me. I prefer to login to this site and find topics that discuss Canon products/reviews/and rumors. Please stop posting your dissatisfaction with a brand, on a site dedicated to what you dislike so much. Comments and posts should be constructive.

Zuuyi

I have issues with corporate greed when they manipulate the markets in dealing with actual necessities.

But this is not a necessity; it is a high-end luxury good for some or a high-end precision tool for others who are pro photographers.

Individuals who actually need this lens to do work will pay the price others will look elsewhere. If you want 300MM you can get a 75-300 for $200. Ohh you want the high end high quality Great low light ability with IS & USM and you want L quality glass. You can pay whatever they suggest or try your luck elsewhere.

Their greed is only controlled by the availability of comparable lenses; if you want that lens you can pay the price they set.

I would just add one thing. I was surprised when Canon celebrated their 50 millionth EOS and their 70 millionth lens, because I realized just how few lenses they sell in comparison to cameras. Does anyone have any idea how many of this specific lens Canon sells in a year?

I wouldn't be surprised if Canon barely breaks even on these high-end lenses. Yes, these lenses are expensive, but without knowing the cost that go into the product, claiming that any company is "greedy" is just ignorance.

I recall an article a few years ago that said Canon makes a particular super telephoto for 2 weeks, then switches to a different lens. They make between a hundred and a thousand, (depending on popularity) and those are stored and sold over a period of 1-2 years. As the stock is depleted, a new 2 week build cycle is planned. The gist of the article was for really rare glass like the 800mm, the factory run is very small, for something like the 300 2.8, they make more but still a very small number compared to a kit lenses, and popular lenses.

You vaguely reference supply and demand, and if anything it's pretty clear that there is a large demand for the 300mm f/2.8 IS series but that is certainly offset by the supply - for the EOS mount you can just about adopt monopoly pricing. There has been at least one other 300mm f/2.8 option for a long while now (the Sigma 120-300mm f/2.8 in its OS and non-OS variants) which is very nearly as good (edit: not sure what I could say in comparison to, not having used it - think I mean in comparison to their 120-300mm).

So, in terms of "constructive criticism," maybe Canon had better get competitive. Or perhaps the 300mm f/2.8 is that much better than the zoom (it does appear to be with a teleconverter; otherwise, not much of a difference you can point to) and Canon has no wish to compete on a price basis. I assume the latter option is what everybody assumes to be true, but at $3100 the Sigma is almost all the way there - I have to wonder what its optical qualities would be like if it were a prime instead of a zoom, and even Michael Reichmann (who retired the 100-400 as he found it was limiting new cameras - back in 2002!) called it "a world-class lens." Sigma's own 300/2.8 prime is quite old (non-OS) and just a bit less expensive than the new zoom, perhaps a sign that they want just one lens to fit in this category (similar to Canon's reasoning, I'd guess).

Often there's some nuggets of truth in even a post that looks like simple sour grapes.

Being the obsessive aspie that I am, I applied your estimated fractions to the number of EF lenses actually made and calculated that Canon have made 0.007 supertele primes!

I kind of eyeballed it and thought it would come out far too low as well. Thanks for running the numbers To neuro's credit, magnitude changes of decimal place add up faster than one might expect.

Ironically, according to Neuro's numbers all of the Canon lenses I own belong to the last 5% group (not including superteles of course), except perhaps the EF 28-90mm III film Rebel kit zoom. I think that the number of primes out there in these groups could be higher than 5% of the total makeup, but I do see a lot of 55-250 and 70-300mm zooms out there being sold as part of DSLR kits (or are trying to be sold).

I agree with most of the comments in this thread, you get what you pay for. I guess the Occupy Wall Street mentality has overflowed into electronics now.

I was just going to add that I really don't think that the markup is that high on these things. I tried to pick up a 16-35mm f/2.8L II locally (B&H had it for $15xx at the time on rebate), pulled out 16 $100 bills and the guy said that he wished he could but they barely make anything off of the higher end stuff, he wouldn't budge. Ended up finding one used for $1250 a couple weeks later.